


Compromise

by samariumwriting



Series: Claurenz Week [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Claurenz Week 2020, Developing Relationship, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22367356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Lorenz gets kicked out, and Claude feels decidedly guilty about the whole issue. Naturally, he offers to room with him until he can find another place; it's an ideal arrangement. Slightly less ideal is that he can no longer ignore his attraction.-Claude was, perhaps, in the habit of worrying about his friends. What with Ignatz doing his best interpretation of the starving artist trope, Lysithea in and out of hospital every other week, and Marianne dropping off grid to start a horse sanctuary or whatever she was doing, he felt like he was allowed to be concerned. Maybe slightly protective, too. He cared about his friends.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester & Claude von Riegan, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Series: Claurenz Week [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610119
Comments: 16
Kudos: 119
Collections: Claurenz Week: Winter 2020





	Compromise

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first piece for Claurenz week! My plan is to publish five between today and Monday. Fingers crossed tbh  
> This piece is for the roommates prompt :)
> 
> Also Claude is trans pass it on

‘So I may have a small situation.’ Claude would admit that the text he received from Lorenz, practically out of the blue and with absolutely no context, worried him a little. When Lorenz said something was a problem, or a situation? He meant it.

‘Everything okay, buddy??’ he replied, hoping that he didn’t sound too worried. Was he allowed to sound worried? He was worried.

Lorenz didn’t reply for several minutes. In that time, Claude paced from his desk to his door and back again a couple of times before giving up and sitting down again. And then standing up again. He wasn’t normally the type to stress (at least, he liked to think so), but when Lorenz had admitted to a problem (which was a feat in and of itself), he hated not being able to work on a solution.

‘In a way, yes,’ Lorenz replied, and that did not help in the slightest. ‘Give me a moment, Claude. I’ll explain soon.’

‘Sure thing, whenever you’re ready,’ he shot back. A minute later, he realised that probably sounded pushy. ‘Hope you’re alright.’

Claude was, perhaps, in the habit of worrying about his friends. What with Ignatz doing his best interpretation of the starving artist trope, Lysithea in and out of hospital every other week, and Marianne dropping off grid to start a horse sanctuary or whatever she was doing, he felt like he was allowed to be concerned. Maybe slightly protective, too. He cared about his friends.

‘I can explain now,’ Lorenz began, getting back to him nearly half an hour later. Claude had maybe been stressing out about the delay a little, but there was nothing he could have done about it. ‘Can I call you?’

‘Absolutely,’ he texted back immediately, and within a few moments his phone lit up with Lorenz’s face; his picture in Claude’s contacts was him asleep on a sofa at a party with cucumber slices on his face. “Hello?”

“Hello, Claude,” Lorenz said. Frankly, he sounded exhausted, and completely unlike himself. But it lifted a little weight off Claude’s chest to hear his voice. Yeah, he really needed to work on all the worrying he was doing.

“What’s going on, Lorenz?” he asked. In the background of Lorenz’s call, Claude could hear background noise. He couldn’t work out what it was, but Lorenz sure as hell wasn’t at home.

“My…” Lorenz let out a heavy sigh. “My father has, I suppose I could say, kicked me out. I imagine I won’t be receiving any money from him anymore either.”

“You’re- what? How?” he asked. Lorenz worked for his father. Lorenz lived with his father. If those two things were gone...well, Lorenz had some money to his name, but other than that he was in decidedly a rough spot. “Can he even do that to you, legally?”

Lorenz made a noise that Claude would probably call the verbal version of a shrug. “If I were being honest, I’d hazard a guess that my employment and the salary I earned was more the result of nepotism than anything else.” He had a point there, Claude supposed, but still…

Lorenz’s father was, admittedly, a terrible person. Claude had heard endless things about the man’s sexism, racism, homophobia...Lorenz could produce an anecdote about his father relating to almost every prejudice known to man. That said, Lorenz had managed to balance all of that quite well up until now. He’d made the difficult trade off a few years back to hide his views for the sake of stability and financial support. “Do you mind me asking what set him off enough to do that?” Claude asked.

Lorenz let out an even deeper sigh. “He- well, he told me that I should no longer associate with you.” Ah. “He said you were unsuitable as a friend, and as such I should cut you off. Naturally, I refused, and I’m afraid it rather escalated from there. I wasn’t at my finest, but I’d dare to say my father deserved all the things I said. He just didn’t appreciate them.”

“Goddess, Lorenz, I’m so sorry.” Claude could feel something curling in the pit of his stomach at those words. He was happy, of course. Endlessly proud of Lorenz for standing up to his father. Overjoyed that he was someone Lorenz would go out of his way to defend. But at the same time, well, it was him. It was his fault, in a way, that Lorenz was in this situation.

“There’s no need to apologise, Claude,” Lorenz said, and his voice sounded heavy. “If anything, I should apologise to you for not stopping my father from saying all that he did sooner.”

“Nope, none of that,” Claude said firmly. “None of this is your fault, Lorenz. You’re not going to take any of the blame here, okay? You did something for me at your own expense, and I appreciate it a lot. And seeing as it sounds like you need somewhere to go, you should stay at mine for a bit.”

“It’s a very kind offer, Claude, but I really do have to decline,” Lorenz said, but there was definite hesitation in his voice. “I couldn’t ask you to do something like that.”

“I’m offering?” Claude suggested. Lorenz returned his words only with silence. “Think about it, Lorenz. If you have any other plans, or if you’d be deeply uncomfortable rooming with me for a bit, that’s okay. But it really only needs to be for a bit. Until you have a steady job and a place to live. For my peace of mind?”

Lorenz sighed a third time, but this time he sounded fond instead of completely exhausted. “You are impossible to say no to when you get an idea into your head,” he said.

“So that’s a yes?”

“Yes, Claude. That’s a yes.”

-

“Claude, are you...sure about this?” Lorenz was looking at Claude’s proposed sleeping arrangements. Claude could tell he was mostly looking at the price tag on his proposed sleeping arrangements.

On the one hand, Claude couldn’t blame Lorenz for hesitating over him spending money. On the other hand, “I am absolutely sure about this,” he replied. He grinned at the box. An assemble at home, currently flat packed bunk bed.

Lorenz shot him a look which he normally reserved for calling out Claude’s bullshit. “We could just buy a camper bed,” he said. “Or borrow one from someone else, I’m sure someone has one their family never uses.” Claude threw his hands into the air with a noise of protest.

“I don’t have siblings, Lorenz,” he said. “I have always, always wanted to sleep in the top bunk. Always. So as long as you’re fine sleeping on the bottom, this is an absolutely ideal arrangement for me.”

Lorenz laughed, and it made Claude’s heart do the tiniest dance. Not a big one, because that had implications he didn’t want to think too much about when Lorenz was literally moving in to his flat, but a little one. Because Lorenz had barely smiled since they’d reunited and Claude desperately wanted to change that.

If what he needed to do to change that was utterly fail at putting a bunk bed together and end up with something which definitely had several pieces on backwards for the first night of them living together? Well, that was okay. He could live with that.

(He fixed it the next morning, and Lorenz was still smiling. It was a nice feeling)

-

Something Claude quickly came to realise about living with and sharing a space with Lorenz is that dancing feeling he got in his heart when Lorenz did just about anything? It didn’t go away through exposure. It didn’t go away at all.

Claude’s flat wasn’t small, not exactly, but it sure wasn’t big, and he did most of the research for his degree from home. He couldn’t miss sights like Lorenz coming out of the shower, his hair still damp and slightly fluffy from towel drying. Or Lorenz absentmindedly running his fingers through his hair. Or Lorenz sleepily pushing his reading glasses up his nose in the evening while curled up with a book.

He also couldn’t miss the way Lorenz looked at him in return. The way he smiled ever so slightly when Claude did something he found amusing. The way he turned off Claude’s desk light with a fond sigh late at night, the way he sometimes cooked breakfast in the mornings, or made a cake when Claude was working particularly hard on something.

There was something between them, that much he knew for certain. It was something he definitely couldn’t ignore. Something that made his cheeks feel warm and his chest tighten a little, sometimes, when he heard Lorenz laugh. When he saw Lorenz smile. He should have known that something like this would happen if they spent more time together, especially in such close proximity.

Claude felt...he felt bad, he supposed. His feelings about Lorenz weren’t bad (they weren’t new, either, though he’d buried them under ‘Lorenz has to pass as straight for his father and he doesn’t need you guilt tripping him over this even if he could ever be interested’ feelings), but that didn’t mean he could act on them.

Lorenz was his- well, to put it bluntly, Lorenz was sort of dependent on him right now. His search for jobs hadn’t been entirely fruitless, but he was yet to get past an interview stage. Claude could see that his attraction to Lorenz was at least partially mutual, but he also didn’t want Lorenz to feel like he owed him a relationship, or - heaven forbid - like he owed him sex just because Claude was doing him a favour.

But, try as he might to hide his feelings, to not make Lorenz feel like he had to act on anything, it came up anyway. Lorenz was alternately very direct about his feelings and opinions and almost shy; in this case, it turned out that he was feeling bold.

“Claude,” Lorenz said one evening when they were eating together. Lorenz had made the dinner, so naturally it was divine. “Are you attracted to me?”

Claude very nearly spat out his mouthful of rice, but that would be way too much of an insult to Lorenz’s cooking, so he grimaced and swallowed before speaking. “You’re an attractive man, Lorenz. You don’t need to fish for compliments, I’ll give them willingly.”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Lorenz replied, and Claude chose not to mention the very light blush forming on his (sharp, attractive) cheekbones. “I was asking if you...wanted to have a relationship with me, I suppose.” In the past, Lorenz had always avoided dating; avoided his father finding out anything about who he was attracted to.

Carefully, Claude traced a pattern in his remaining rice with his fork. He didn’t know what to say. “I...I don’t know, Lorenz. Sorry.” That seemed like the safest thing to say. But then he watched Lorenz practically deflate in front of him, and he felt like the worst person alive. “It’s not that I’m not attracted to you. I really am. I just…”

“What is it?” Lorenz asked. “You can tell me, Claude, and I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

Claude looked up at him again. “I don’t want you to feel forced into anything,” he said. “Not to be blunt about it or anything, but yes, I would like to date you. But I also pay the rent for the place you live, and I can’t ask you for something like that in good conscience. Does that make sense?”

“I...suppose,” Lorenz said, but he did still look a little put out. Claude didn’t blame him. A part of his heart was dancing right now at the casual admittance that Lorenz did, in fact, return his feelings, but it was decidedly squashed by the guilt that came with this whole situation. “I won’t pretend to like it, but I understand. I would never think you the kind of person who would pressure another into anything like this, but I know my assurance may not be enough to overcome your own fears.”

Claude nodded. “Thanks for understanding.” They sat in silence for a few moments. Neither of them were even eating, but neither of them made a move to go anywhere either. “Hey, Lorenz?” he said.

Lorenz looked up, a faint smile on his face. “Yes, Claude?”

“Your eyes are pretty,” he said, and he shot Lorenz a wink for good measure. “But, more importantly, do you fancy going to see a film together next week?”

It took Lorenz a moment, but once he caught on, he smiled widely. That, too, made Claude’s heart beat a little faster. “I would be delighted.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed, please please consider leaving a comment. You can also check me out and see what else I'm working on if you follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/samariumwriting) :)


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